Industrial automation systems can perform various processes to produce desired products or processed materials. An industrial control system can comprise various industrial devices, industrial processes, other industrial assets, and network-related assets (e.g., communication network devices and software).
Industrial controllers and their associated input/output (I/O) devices can be useful to the operation of modern industrial automation systems. These industrial controllers can interact with field devices on the plant floor to control automated processes relating to such objectives as product manufacture, material handling, batch processing, supervisory control, and other such applications. Industrial controllers can store and execute user-defined control programs to effect decision-making in connection with the controlled process. Such programs can include, but are not limited to, ladder logic, sequential function charts, function block diagrams, structured text, or other such programming structures. In general, industrial controllers can read input data from sensors and metering devices that can provide discreet and telemetric data regarding one or more states of the controlled system, and can generate control outputs based on these inputs in accordance with the user-defined program.
In addition to industrial controllers and their associated I/O devices, some industrial automation systems also can include low-level control systems, such as vision systems, barcode marking systems, variable frequency drives, industrial robots, and the like, which can perform local control of portions of the industrial process, or which can have their own localized control systems.
Operators and other users can interact with industrial automation systems, for example, to facilitate performing manual operations to facilitate operation of an industrial automation system and/or monitoring or managing machines or processes associated with the industrial automation system. For example, operators and other users can interact with (e.g., work with, monitor, manage, etc.) industrial devices, industrial processes, control programs, human machine interfaces (HMIs), etc., associated with the industrial automation system, to facilitate operation of the industrial automation system. Some operators or users can have more experience than other operators or users, which often can translate into the more experienced operators or users being better performing operators or users in connection with the industrial automation system. Also, regardless of the amount of experience in industrial automation, some operators or users can perform better than other operators or users with respect to the industrial automation system. As a result, an industrial automation system, or portion thereof, typically can operate more efficiently when certain operators or users (e.g., more experienced or better performing operators or users) are working with, monitoring, or managing the industrial automation system, or portion thereof, than when other operators or users (e.g., less experienced or lower performing operators or users) are working with, monitoring, or managing the industrial automation system, or portion thereof.
The above-described deficiencies of today's industrial control and business systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.